A recent “warbiking” exercise in London undertaken by Sophos' global head of security research, James Lyne, showed there to be an astonishing number of businesses and home users employing insecure, poorly implemented or even defunct wireless security protocols. Considering how commonly Wi-Fi networks are used, the situation leaves millions of people, companies and their valuable data open to attack.

IT security company Sophos highlighted this worrying state of wireless security in the UK’s capital city at Infosecurity Europe this week. The security firm had sent its global head of security research, James Lyne, and his computer-equipped bicycle onto the streets of London to test how safe homes, businesses and even people on mobile phones are from cybercriminals, as part of its ongoing “World of Warbiking” tour.

Conducted over two days around the streets of London, Lyne’s warbiking exercise revealed that of 81,743 networks surveyed, some 29.5% were using either the known-to-be-broken Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) algorithm, or no security encryption at all. A further 52% of networks were using Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) – which is no longer a recommended security algorithm.